Alvaro Uribe won the Colombian presidency last week by a landslide, but he can claim an even bigger victory: he lived to see election day. In a nation where politics often resembles Russian roulette--a mayor is murdered every three weeks or so in Colombia--Uribe became an especially vulnerable target for assassination when he declared himself the candidate who, if elected, would whip Colombia's vicious and seemingly invincible guerrilla armies. By the time the one-year campaign was over, the largest rebel group, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC, had tried to kill Uribe at least three times, most recently by bombing...